Diamond Aircraft is now manufacturing their DA20 C1 aircraft with the Garmin G600 panel. This should come as no great surprise as the announcement for this change is months old. The Garmin G600 is an amazing piece of technology. It's a combination of the standard six pack of instruments displayed in amazing clarity on a monitor placing all of the necessary information to the pilot in a smaller space allowing for a more efficient scan. For complete details and more photos on the amazing Garmin G600, visit the Garmin website.
As for me I'm excited that the technology revolution has finally seemed to pick up momentum in aircraft. The choices for GPS based avionics and glass panel displays are still few, but the prospect of even better technology is thrilling. Just one example of such innovation in airplane avionics is Garmin's recent introduction of SVT or Synthetic Vision Technlogy which paints a GPS generated three dimensional image of the actual terrain outside your aircraft providing even more situational awareness and giving pilots more information and resources to make the safest and best decisions.
Though my enthusiasm for these new avionics is strong, there is still a part of me that will find it difficult to say goodbye to the "steam gauges" of yesteryear. Having completed my private pilot certificate and my instrument rating in a plane that had the "old panel" avionics makes me somewhat proud of that heritage, and seeing that technology disappearing makes me worry that new pilots will not fully grasp the scope and wonderment that these new avionics packages offer. I have no doubt that pilot skills will still include dead reckoning, pilotage and intensive study of charts, approach plates and weather reports necessary for accurate and complete flight planning, I just hope that having all of this information displayed in color and 3D in front of pilots won't make them lazy (*cough* Northwest flight from San Diego to Minneapolis).
The significance of having this kind of technology available on one of the world's most used training airplanes means that most new pilots will have no exposure to the kind of instrumentation that has been around since the 1930s. I just hope they won't become the kind of "instant gratification" people that a lot of kids are these days being able to get information on pretty much anything anywhere, anytime. So in homage to my early training days, I've included the pre G600 and post G600 panels of the Diamond DA20 C1. For more pictures and information about the DA20 C1 please visit the Diamond Aircraft website.
